If you’ve ever seen the classic Disney film ‘The Lion King,’ you probably remember “hakuna matata,” the catch phrase of laid-back duo Timon and Pumba. “Hakuna matata” is actual Swahili spoken in eastern Africa, and it really does mean “no worries.” However, many people believe that Disney’s trademark of this phrase is cultural appropriation.
Shelton Mpala, born in Zimbabwe and currently living in Toronto, started a petition to revoke Disney’s petition of the Swahili phrase. “The decision to trademark ‘Hakuna Matata’ is predicated purely on greed and is an insult not only [to] the spirit of the Swahili people but also, Africa as a whole,” Mpala explains. Disney countered with a statement of their own, saying that their “registration for ‘Hakuna Matata’ T-shirts, which was filed in 1994, has never and will not prevent individuals from using the phrase.”
On top of the petition, a potential challenge to the trademark has risen from the Kenyan band Them Mushrooms. The band wrote and performed a song entitled “Hakuna Matata” in 1982, over a decade before Disney claimed it. Kenyan Lawyer Cathy Mputhia said that “it is unfortunate that there has been a lot of pilferage of African culture over the years, through the use of intellectual property rights. This means that heritage that ought to belong to a certain group of people is instead pilfered using legal methods, whereby third parties end up being awarded sole rights.”
The petition, operating on Change.org, has accumulated 168,467 signatures and counting at the time of writing.
